Shatter
by Scheherazade's Daughter
Summary: When a routine mission goes wrong, Melinda May and junior agent Victoria Hand are captured and held prisoner by the sadistic John Bodho. This is the story of how they survived, a tale of angst, whump, and unlikely friendships. TW for torture, SI, and ED.
1. Stakeout

**Disclaimer:** I do not own these characters or this universe. I am not making any money off this piece.

**Author's Note**: This story takes place shortly after Bahrain and covers an event that gave May the final push to transfer to administration. Originally I was going to use an OC instead of Hand, but the show didn't do her justice and she deserves a backstory and character arc of sorts. Though they are only in one chapter, Maria Hill's and Phil Coulson's parts are significant. I have all the chapters written and in the absence of overwhelming negative feedback will post one every few days. Trigger warnings in place for torture (ch. 7, mostly) ED and SI (ch. 10). Feedback is always appreciated (feedback, not compliments). And so, without further ado, I give you Melinda May in _Shatter._

* * *

"Is everything ready?" Victoria Hand asked, crouching next to me behind the fallen tree.

I nodded, touching my earpiece. "Coulson? Duvall? You in position?"

"Affirmative," came the reply.

"Johnson? Garrett?"

"We're set."

"Now we wait," I told Hand. We settled down, binoculars in hand, to wait for the arrival of our quarry.

I felt strange. This was my first field mission since Bahrain. I didn't have any of the excitement, the anticipation, the pre-battle adrenaline I remembered. The new Melinda didn't feel any of that, just something that was equal parts calm and numbness. My instincts were still in place, though; if anything, they were sharper than ever. I glanced at the terrain around me with the eyes of a specialist. The Congolese jungle was rich and lush with foliage, everything from groundcover to huge trees like the one we were hiding behind. I couldn't see any other trees that were thick enough to provide cover if things went sour, but there was a small hillock to our right that might be enough for one person to take shelter behind. I calculated I could be behind it in three seconds if I jumped. There was also a ridge about a hundred meters behind us, which would provide better cover but take longer to reach, especially if we were under fire.

In front of us was the subject of our stakeout: a trail, little more than trampled foliage. Its appearance was deceiving, though; it was a major pipeline for Microtex, a corporation that liked to deal in bioweapons, with anthrax being a favorite. They had hired a private security company to escort their shipments through central Africa, and a source within the company had told us that this trail was part of their route through the Congo. Our mission was simple: hijack the shipment, which according to our source was their latest attempt to re-create smallpox, and personally see that it reached the Slingshot, where it would get fired into the sun. Good riddance to bad trash.

On the other side of the trail, Agents Phil Coulson and Jack Duvall were concealed behind some bushes. I could barely see their outlines if I looked closely. Good. I hoped Hand and I were similarly concealed. I could blend in to an Arctic snowdrift wearing black, but Hand was not known for being stealthy, on top of being a veritable giraffe. This one was in the hands of a higher power. I listened closely to the jungle sounds. The cries of a dozen different species of bird, monkey, and God knew what else rang through the air. The old Melinda would have been awestruck, but the new Melinda just took it as proof that everyone on the team was properly hidden and not making any noise that might frighten the animals. Good. The higher power was cooperating.

Still, there was a small seed of doubt in my mind. I had been working with Phil Coulson for a long time, since before Bahrain, and Jack Duvall had been in Operations longer than either of us. Johnson and Garrett, who were keeping watch further down the road, were also experienced agents, though Johnson was still a little wet behind the ears. It was Agent Hand I was worried about. Everything about her reeked of unprofessionalism, from the incredibly redundant high heels she wore off-duty to the ridiculous maroon highlights in her hair. She'd transferred from Administration three months ago, and she hadn't had any sort of field training since the Academy. This was the biggest mission she'd been a part of so far, and there was no room for screwing up. Had it been up to me, I'd have left her back at the mobile base. But Coulson said she was ready, and I trusted him. But I didn't have to like it.

As if to prove my doubts, Hand leaned over and whispered, "How much longer?"

"Shh!" I hissed. Hadn't I spent the entire afternoon drilling it into her? Stakeouts. Require. Patience. One would think that someone from Administration, land of red tape and waiting lists, would have patience aplenty. Not Victoria Hand, apparently. I gritted my teeth in frustration.

Time passed, and we remained hidden behind the fallen tree. Hand's body so close to mine made me uncomfortable; the new Melinda didn't like to be touched. But I sat stone-still, a perfectly disciplined operative, barely aware of the ache in my body from holding one position for so long. Hand, however, couldn't keep from fidgeting to save her life, (and it might come down to that); I saw her check her watch every thirty seconds or so, then tap the display to make sure nothing was wrong with it. I closed my eyes and counted to ten. There was nothing about this woman that didn't annoy me.

I was spared further irritation by Johnson's voice in my ear. "We've got something up ahead, about eight hundred meters north of our position."

I whipped out my binoculars and peered out from behind the tree. I couldn't make anything out. Granted, the foliage was dense, but I should at least be able to see movement. Maybe it was just a gorilla or something …

"I don't see anything," said Hand, way too loudly.

I clenched my fists. "Can it, Hand," I snapped, as quietly as I could. "Just shut up and stay out of the way, got it?"

She nodded, looking like I'd slapped her. We could now add oversensitivity to her long list of shortcomings. Or maybe this was the new Melinda, being too harsh.

"Negative contact," I whispered into my earpiece. "I do not have a visual."

"Neither do we," Coulson reported. "Johnson? You sure about that?"

He replied, "Negative, false a—" He was interrupted by a loud burst of static. Startled, I yanked my earpiece out. I heard Hand stifle a yelp as she did the same. Suddenly I noticed that everything had gone quiet. Too quiet. No birds, no monkeys, even the bugs were silent.

That was when I got the feeling that something about this mission was about to go very, very wrong.


	2. Contact

My instincts, honed by years of specialist training, kicked in immediately. "Down!" I yelled, grabbing Agent Hand by the jacket and pulling her to the ground with me. We were just in time; the second my face hit the mud, a hail of bullets laced the air above us. Automatically, my hand went to my earpiece. Then I remembered: someone, presumably whoever was shooting at us, had jammed our communications. Their guns sounded like automatics, P-90's, maybe? These guys weren't playing around.

"It's a trap!" Coulson shouted from his position behind the bush. "They were waiting for us!"

"I noticed!" I retorted. Then, seeing Hand trying to sit up, "Stay down if you want to get out of here in one piece."

I pulled my gun out of its thigh holster. Much as I prefer hand-to-hand, I know my way around a firearm. Turning over on my stomach, I raised the weapon, looking for movement, a muzzle flash, anything to give me some idea where the enemy was. Nothing. It was like the bullets were coming out of nowhere.

"Got a visual on the hostiles?" I called to Coulson over the sound of the gunfire.

"Negative!" came the reply. It was a little farther away than last time; I hoped he'd found some decent cover. Bushes are great for concealment, not so much for avoiding bullets.

A round hit a sapling next to me, and shards of green wood rained down on me. Shit. They were using explosive ammo. If I took a bullet, I was as good as dead. The thought didn't scare me as much as it once would have, but I still had no desire to meet my maker, not yet.

"Visual contact!" Duvall shouted. "Three hundred meters southeast." I quickly got my bearings and turned around as best I could without raising my head. Hand followed suit, gun at the ready. Sure enough, the sunlight glinted off something metal. Seconds later, I saw a muzzle flash. I emptied two rounds in that direction, wincing at the noise. The acrid scent of gunpowder was beginning to fill the air.

"We need to regroup!" Coulson shouted, his voice carrying a frightened edge. This was bad. Coulson was one of the most unflappable people I knew; if he was rattled, things were really hitting the fan. "Behind that ridge; take separate routes!"

_You left, me right, _I signaled Hand. She nodded. Keeping my gun at the ready, I crawled on my stomach across the forest floor, pushing off with my elbows. It was hardly comfortable, but I didn't care. Something about being shot at really puts things in perspective. I watched Hand slithering through the leaves towards the ridge, having the good sense to keep the tree between her and the source of the gunfire. Maybe she was more stealthy than I'd given her credit for.

I reached an open patch of ground and crossed it with a rather awkward crouching run, hearing a bullet come perilously close to my ear. I wasn't scared. I just dropped back down to my stomach and continued crawling, branches hitting my body and thorns tearing at my clothes. A particularly sharp branch tore right through the leg of my tactical suit and took a nice strip of skin off, but considering the amount of fire we were under, I didn't think even the old Melinda would have taken much notice. I glanced to my left, looking for Hand, but couldn't see her. The ridge was right up ahead. Gun still clutched in my right hand, I stretched out and rolled over the top of the ridge, twisting in midair to land on my feet with my weapon drawn. To my relief, Hand was there already, facing away from the ridge and white-knuckling her gun.

"You hurt?" I asked.

She shook her head, looking slightly shell-shocked. Her maroon-streaked hair had fallen from its ponytail and hung in damp strings around her face, which was completely devoid of color. "Y-you're bleeding," she said, nodding at my leg.

"Just a scratch. Tree branch, not bullet." It could still become infected with God knows what kind of jungle bacteria if we were out here for any extended period of time, but I wasn't about to tell her that. In situations like this, panic is an agent's worst enemy.

I took stock of the situation. The ridge was tall enough that, as long as Hand hunched her shoulders a little, we could stand up and still be covered by it, and the forest behind us was dense enough that we could disappear into it if necessary. Leg aside, Hand and I were both uninjured, though I had my doubts about how well she'd hold up under pressure, and we still had most of our gear. The gunfire was dying down, but we didn't know if there were hostiles still out there. I'd had no word from Coulson and Duvall, and I'd dropped my earpiece back by the trail. It was useless anyway. We were alone.

"What now?" Hand asked me.

"We wait for Coulson," I said firmly. "If he and the others are no-show, we go back to the mobile base and radio for an extraction."

"Okay." She exhaled audibly. I guess having someone else take charge had relieved some of the pressure. "Everything's going to be okay, right?" Without giving me a chance to lie and tell her it was, she barreled on. "I mean, those guys won't be able to find us here, will they? And you're, you're the Cavalry, so even if they—"

"Don't ever call me that," I snapped. "And please, for once in your life, shut up. Right now, we wait, we watch, and we listen. _Quietly. _Got it?"

So we waited, and watched, and listened. _Quietly._ The gunfire eventually stopped entirely, leaving the forest deathly silent. I considered going out to look for Coulson and the others, but the lack of animal noise told me that there were still people nearby. It would be best to stay here and wait it out. But if Coulson were injured or … no. I wouldn't let myself even consider the possibility. Phil Coulson was the closest thing this new Melinda had to a friend. He'd helped me pick up the shattered pieces of myself after Bahrain, to put my fractured mind back together, at least as much as was possible. He couldn't be dead. He didn't deserve it. It just wasn't an option.

The sound of a twig breaking rang through the trees, loud as a gunshot. I glanced over at Hand, ready to read her the riot act _very quietly_, but her eyes were glued to the trees behind us. I spun around, gun at the ready, but it was too late.


	3. Capture

A fist slammed into my stomach, and I reeled back in surprise, dropping my gun. Quickly I retaliated, kicking up with my leg. My foot collided with soft flesh with the force of a jackhammer, and my assailant dropped like a rock. He was a strong, well-built man wearing forest camo and light tactical gear, and he wasn't alone. More soldiers bled out of the forest, some of them holding knives and guns, others fighting bare-handed. How had they snuck up on us? I'd been stupid, I thought with disgust. If I hadn't been so distracted worrying about Coulson, I'd have heard them coming. That sounded like something Hand would do.

Three more soldiers came running at me, two of them brandishing knives. I took a deep breath and plunged into the fray, letting my instincts take over. This was much better; I was in my element now. My limbs executed kicks and punches with lethal grace, and there was nothing but the next strike. I spared Agent Hand a glance and was surprised to see that she was holding her own. An arm around my throat brought me back to the action, and I tucked my chin and dropped my weight, hitting the ground with catlike agility. I rolled over on my side and kicked out the soldier's knee, hearing the joint disarticulate with a sickening pop. I sprang to my feet and whirled around with a back elbow strike, hitting another soldier squarely in the temple. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hand fighting with a knife she must have stolen.

I whirled around and caught another man in the stomach with my knee. He doubled over, clutching his abdomen. An especially beefy soldier with about eight inches and a hundred pounds on me came charging, then stopped abruptly, falling forward with a knife in his back.

"Thank me later," Hand shouted, and whirled around with a spinning left hook.

The click of a gun safety being removed stopped us in our tracks. I looked up and found myself staring down the barrel of an Uzi. Shit. I slowly held up my hands and put them behind my head. I glanced at Hand and saw her do the same thing. Then there was a muffled thump, like the sound of a gun with a silencer, but higher pitched, and she dropped like a rock. Another thump, and I felt something slam into my ribs and spread warmth through my chest. I was barely aware of my body hitting the ground.

* * *

When I came to, I was lying flat on my back on a cold cement floor. I opened my eyes, which were so dry the lids stuck together. I blinked a few times, longing for my eye drops. I was in a stone room, a dungeon, really. It was about twelve by ten, with a small window near the ceiling. The window was Plexiglas reinforced with wire; there was no chance of breaking it. The door was on the wall farthest from me; it was reinforced steel with a deadbolt lock holding it in place, if I wasn't mistaken. There was a small slot in the door, presumably for meal trays. The room smelled like a combination of damp earth and mildew, and I wrinkled my nose. What little light there was came through the window, which was encrusted with dirt.

I saw Hand lying on the floor a few feet away from me, still unconscious. I figured I'd have a while to sort things out before she woke up; I metabolize everything, including tranquilizer bullets, at a faster rate than normal. If I had everything under control by the time she came to, she would be less freaked out and my life would be easier.

I took stock. Our gear was gone, I noticed, but we still had our clothes on. It was a positive sign if I'd ever seen one. Not as positive as, say, a spare .38 lying around, or a broken window, but I knew what no clothes would mean. Even the new Melinda shuddered at the thought. We were still together, which was another plus. I'd done a stint in solitary confinement outside Sarajevo last year and didn't care to repeat the experience. And the scrape on my calf didn't look infected, which was another small mercy.

I tried to sit up. Immediately my head started to pound. Whatever I'd been hit with was still wearing off. I swallowed and took a deep breath, trying not to be sick. I propped myself up against the wall opposite the window, wincing at the stiffness in my muscles and joints. My vision slipped in and out of focus like a bad camera lens. What the hell had they shot us with? Valium 10? Thorazine? Agent Duvall's moonshine?

As soon as my head cleared enough to maintain a coherent stream of consciousness again, I began analyzing the situation in more detail. I hadn't heard any helicopters or ATV's before we'd been ambushed, so we'd probably been transported here by truck, which, considering the hostility of the terrain, meant we couldn't be too far from where we'd been staked out. The men who'd ambushed us had worn BDU's, probably military surplus, with no identifying logos or insignias. But judging by the improvised way they had fought, they probably weren't the private security goons we were waiting for. Most likely they belonged to one of too many tribal factions fighting for control of the area. The recon teams had told us the area was clear, but idiots are everywhere.

As soon as I felt well enough, I stood up and began stretching my legs. I reached up to the ceiling, then touched my toes. My back cracked, stiff from being on the floor for so long. I began pacing the perimeter of the cell, scrutinizing it for anything I'd missed, anything that could allow us to escape. I found none.

Eventually I abandoned my pacing and sat down against the wall to wait for Hand to wake up. After half an hour or so, I saw her finger twitch. This was followed by a low moan, and an opening of the eyes. She reached up and rubbed her forehead. "Wha' happened?" she asked, slurring badly.

"They tranqued us," I said. Then, feeling she needed some reassurance, "Everything's going to be okay." I tried to make it sound sincere, but it came out wooden, and I don't think she believed me. I wished the old Melinda were here. She was good at comforting people. Always ready with the right words of reassurance, always smiling, quick to hug.

"Where are we?" Hand asked, trying to sit up. She quickly abandoned the endeavor, no doubt experiencing the same aftereffects I had earlier.

"Some sort of prison. Probably not too far from where we were captured."

"Captured …" she let her voice trail off and swallowed hard. "Are you okay?"

"Me? Yeah. You?"

She blinked a few times. "Lost my contacts and I feel like hell."

"It's the tranquilizer. It'll wear off soon."

"So what do we do now?" Good, I thought. She was thinking like an agent and, above all, not freaking out.

"Gather as much intel as possible and wait for an opportunity to escape or contact our team," I instructed."

"Good." A horrified expression came over her face, and she said, "Are they going to torture us?"

"Probably," I replied, immediately regretting my honesty.

"Oh, God …" She sat up and hugged herself. "Oh, God, please, no." So much for thinking like an agent and not freaking out. We weren't even being interrogated yet, much less tortured, and she was already falling apart. I closed my eyes and began counting to ten in every language I spoke. Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco.

"How the hell can you be so calm? We're about to be brutally tortured!" Ichi, ni, san, shi, go. "We have to get out of here!" Her voice was rising to a hysterical pitch. Wahed, ethnayn, thalaatha, arba'ah, khamsah. She walked over to where I was seated and shook me by the shoulders. Abandoning my counting, I swiftly rose to my feet, grabbing her wrists and holding them as far above her head as I could reach, which was not far.

"Listen to me, Hand," I snapped. "This isn't the time or the place. You're an agent of SHIELD; act like one." I released her arms, and she let them fall limply to her sides.

Just then, there was the sound of a key in a lock, and the heavy steel door to our cell opened with a horrendous squealing sound. Our captors obviously hadn't heard of WD-40. I tried to get a glimpse of whoever had opened it, but the hallway was too dark.

"Hello, Agent May, Agent Hand," a menacing voice from the shadows said. "Shall we begin?"


	4. Interrogation

**Author's Note**: This is where the story begins to get dark. The chapter carries a trigger warning for torture.

* * *

I was in another stone room. Like my cell, it smelled like mildew and had minimal light, but was much bigger and had a large archway instead of a door. Quite the change of scenery. I was strapped to a chair with leather restraints, the kind they use in psych hospitals. They were fastened too tight for proper circulation, much less escape. At least they didn't chafe the way rope or handcuffs would. Next to me was a tray of instruments, and despite my valiant efforts not to look at them, I had counted eight knives and scalpels of various types, a blowtorch, a cigarette lighter, three vials of God-knew-what, a case of syringes, a bottle of isopropyl alcohol, a beaker of hydrochloric acid, and an electric cattle prod. Even the new Melinda was a little shaken.

"Melinda May, no?" asked the man who'd taken me from my cell. He'd probably gotten my name off my ID tags. His name, he'd told me as his goons strapped me down, was John Bodho, but in the privacy of my own mind I'd nicknamed him Bozo. He was about my height and seemed more than slightly out of shape. I could easily take him in a fair fight, or an unfair one, for that matter. But he was flanked by his two goons, each of them a solid six feet and built like an MMA fighter. Neither one of them had any weapons, most likely so I couldn't steal one and escape. I could probably overpower one of them, but both would be pushing it. I'd need the element of surprise and a lot of luck, not to mention the use of my arms and legs.

"Who are you people?" I asked. The more information I had, the better. I remembered that the Black Widow's signature interrogation style is to allow herself to be taken prisoner and then surreptitiously extract information from her captors, all the while making them think it was the other way around. I wasn't stupid; I knew I was nowhere near as good as Romanoff, but maybe I'd get lucky.

"It's very simple, Agent May," he said with a smirk. "We are businessmen. Entrepreneurs. We reappropriate Microtex shipments and sell them on the black market. Brings in a lot of cash, no?"

Great. Glorified racketeers. At least this one liked to gloat. Looked like I was getting lucky after all.

"We were very disappointed to see SHIELD interfering in our business," he continued. "So you can see, we had no choice but to deal with you and your companions."

A knot formed in my stomach_. Coulson._

"Unfortunately, you and Agent Hand were the only ones we were able to apprehend. But, no matter. We were able to seize the shipment nonetheless." He hadn't said anything about not killing Coulson, but it was a fair bet he'd be gloating about it if he had. The knot in my stomach loosened.

"How did you know we were coming?" I asked, trying to play into his ego without being too obvious. "We're SHIELD's finest; we cover our tracks."

"We didn't know," he said, with a smile. "We were waiting for the same shipment as you."

"But you jammed our communications," I pointed out. "You had to have some kind of intel."

He laughed. "That little gadget? We always carry it. Never know when you might run into trouble." So Coulson had been wrong. It hadn't been an ambush, just pure blind luck on their part. Well, at least that meant we didn't have a leak. "We always come prepared," he said. "Glorious, no?"

"I'm going to go with no," I replied, rolling my eyes slightly. I regretted the words as soon as I said them. This wasn't a spy movie. It is okay to be a smartass in the ten seconds before you escape, and only then. It's the first thing new agents learn in resistance training. Sure enough, he backhanded me across the face so hard I yelled. The slap stung, but it probably wouldn't leave a bruise.

My relief was short lived. He picked up a scalpel from the tray and twirled it in his fingers, leering at me. "Indeed, Agent May." His voice took on a hard edge. "But no matter. I'm sure that you will tell us everything we need to know, starting with the location of your base."

I stayed silent. The seconds ticked by.

"Very well, then," he said, and with a grin, brought the scalpel down. The blade bit into my thigh, cutting through my pants and down into my flesh. It was dull and thick, so it didn't hurt much, just a scratching sensation. He cut into me again, deeper this time, but I didn't flinch. Between my resistance training and the new Melinda's relative indifference to pain, this wasn't going to be too hard as long as he stuck to the blade and didn't go too deep.

"Where is your base?" he asked me again, holding up the bloodied scalpel. "Do you have one in the Congo, or did you fly in from somewhere else? Just tell me and this can all stop." At my silence, he simply shrugged, switched blades, and cut into me again, my side this time. The blade was sharper, and it hurt slightly more, but I didn't scream. "Where is your base?" Another cut. This was getting old.

Just when I thought he was starting to sound like a stuck record, he switched questions. "What was the source of your information on the Microtex shipment?" I didn't answer, and he cut open a section of my shirt, laying bare the white skin beneath. "What was your source?" I regarded him calmly. His eyes took on a feral gleam and he gave me that sadistic grin again. "Very well. Have it your way." He cut all the way down to the muscle this time. "What was your source? Come on, Agent May. Talk to me. I can help you. If you tell me, then there will be no need to subject your friend to this treatment, no?"

"Hand is not my friend," I said, just for the record. I thought about adding more, venting my spleen to this man. I thought about telling him how annoying she was, the hard-nosed bureaucrat-in-training so out of her element in the field it would be comical if it weren't so life-endangering. I thought about telling him that I would rather have jumped into a pool of lampreys, which I happen to know was a method of execution back in medieval England, than work with Victoria Hand. That this was all her fault for being too loud on the stakeout anyway. That the only reason I'd been putting on some semblance of civility towards her was because Coulson told me to.

But I kept my mouth shut, because the less said during an interrogation, the better. Ideally, I should have said nothing, which is enough to beat half the interrogation tactics in the book.

And also because the moment he threatened her, I felt my stomach turn. Sure, she was stupid and irritating and if it were up to me I'd send her butt straight back to administration where it belonged, but she didn't deserve this. For a fraction of a second, I wanted to tell him everything, names, locations, sources, the works, if it would keep her safe. But I didn't, because bureaucrat or not, she was an agent of SHIELD, and she knew the risks just as much as I did.

The questioning continued for an hour, two, three. I lost count. He would keep switching questions, trying to catch me off balance, coax me into revealing even the smallest bit of information. He taunted and cajoled and threatened, but I stayed silent the whole time. Every time I didn't answer a question, he cut me, deeper each time. I started having to grit my teeth to keep from yelling.

After a while I started feeling tired, adrenaline crash, injuries, and drugs taking their toll. Eventually I was fading in and out of awareness, until a bucketful of cold water thrown in my face woke me up. It startled me so much I yelled, but since it was probably the closest thing I was going to get to a bath in the foreseeable future, I didn't mind too much.

After Bozo finally figured out he wasn't going to get anything from me today, he grabbed the bottle of rubbing alcohol and splashed it on my numerous cuts, including the scrape on my calf. It burned, but I kept my composure. I was actually slightly grateful; he was basically disinfecting my cuts.

He motioned to his guards. "Take her back to her cell and bring me the other one." I was too exhausted to put up a fight as they dragged me through the hallway to my cell. They tossed me back into the concrete room, and I fell to the ground, my reaction time too slow for me to catch myself. My knees hurt where they'd hit the floor; they'd be black and blue the next morning.

Then the two guards grabbed Hand. She fought them, managing to get in a few good hits before they subdued her with a punch to the temple and dragged her from the room, closing the door behind them with a final-sounding clunk. I rolled over onto my back, the room swimming. I must have lost a lot of blood, I thought idly. Dehydration probably didn't help either. I breathed in and out, focusing on that and that only. After a few minutes, I fell into a sort of stupor, neither asleep nor fully awake.

My daze was shattered by the sound of Victoria Hand screaming.


	5. Incarceration

**Author's** **Note**: Please leave feedback. This is my first multi-chapter piece and I'm feeling that I should not continue because so few people have given their opinions. I realize it started out kind of slow, but it's picking up the pace now. Things are about to get exciting ...

* * *

The next interrogation session was relatively tame, no harder than the last one. The "torture" mostly consisted of him rubbing alcohol and iodine into my old wounds as roughly as he could every time I didn't answer a question. It hurt, but it was bearable. Besides, I was glad for the antiseptic. Maybe I'd get a few bandages out of the deal as well. Hey, a girl can dream. Other than that, he was mostly using the small-town police interrogation techniques: wobbly chair, A/C turned down, bright lights that flickered on and off, and, of course, lots of yelling and getting in my personal space. No problem. And he wasn't really very good at it anyway; he'd probably learned most of it from cop shows and the Internet. Under any other circumstances, it would have almost been cute.

They took Hand away as soon as they'd dumped me back in my cell, and I waited, listening. She didn't scream, as she had the first time, but I could hear cruel laughter and whimpering. At least she knew enough not to say anything. It's dangerous, opening your mouth during an interrogation, because there's no guarantee that you'll be able to close it again. Even a scathing insult can too easily turn into locations and contacts and codes. I'd seen it happen once before, on a mission in Zurich. My partner had been a rookie who'd seen too many James Bond movies. Tried to cover up the fact that he was quaking in his boots by talking back to the guys interrogating him. And then talking back had just become talking, and talking had become talking about the mission, and the other agents involved, and what we all planned to do. I'd been yelling at him the whole time to stop, to keep his mouth shut, that he was going to get everyone else killed, but anytime he stopped talking, they would wave a needle or a jumper cable in his face, and he'd start spilling his guts again. That whole incident was tucked away with several others in a mental file folder labeled "unmitigated disasters." I had a feeling that I'd be adding this mission to that file soon enough.

Hours later, they brought Hand back, tossing her unceremoniously onto the concrete floor. She was bleeding; some of her old wounds had opened up, and a dark yellow bruise was beginning to form on her cheek. The door slammed shut behind her with a dull clunk. She lay there for a minute, stunned. Then we heard hurried footsteps approaching our cell. I tensed. No. They couldn't be coming for me again, not this soon. But the footsteps only pushed a water bottle and two granola bars through the slot in the door and left. I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. Mentally, I chastised myself for it. Since when was I scared of some loser racketeer and his penny-ante "torture"?

"Dinner is served," Hand said sarcastically, pushing herself upright and unwrapping one of the bars.

"Wait!" I shouted. Hadn't this woman had any training? Or read your basic spy novel for that matter? "It could be drugged. The water too. Check it for puncture marks and take a very small bite, then wait ten minutes to see if you start feeling sick."

"Are you kidding? I'm starving."

"You can hold out another ten minutes," I said, trying and failing to keep the hard edge out of my voice.

"Fine, Agent Bitch," she retorted, taking a nibble of the granola bar. I grabbed the water bottle before she could and checked the seal, which was still intact, then examined it for needle marks. Finding none, I took a small sip and screwed the cap back on before I could guzzle the whole thing. Between blood loss and not having had any fluids all day, I was severely dehydrated.

"Has it been ten minutes yet?" Hand asked, two minutes later.

"Two."

After another four minutes, Hand said, "Screw it." Before I could stop her, she'd eaten the rest of the granola bar and drunk half the water.

"Hey!" I snatched the water bottle from her hand, spilling some of it in the process. Damn. "Do you have any idea what's at stake here? If there's sodium thiopental in that, you'll be spilling your guts to them in thirty seconds. You're putting every operation you've ever been a part of in danger. Agents could die because you couldn't wait five minutes to eat." This was definitely going in the unmitigated disasters file.

"Not all of us can be as tough as the Cavalry, May," she said viciously.

I shot to my feet, ignoring the head rush. "Don't you ever call me that!" I yelled. "If that word ever leaves your mouth again, so help me, I will save them the trouble of killing you!"

She looked up at me, startled by my outburst, but not chastened. "Bit sensitive, are we?"

"About that, yes," I said, trying and failing to keep the edge out of my voice. I counted to ten in Japanese, Swahili, and my native Mandarin. I didn't need more escalations.

"Well, too bad," she retorted. Then, looking down at her leg, "Damn it, why won't this stop bleeding?" She pressed her hand over a particular deep and nasty-looking cut on her calf.

"Here." I pulled off a scrap of my pants that was hanging on by a thread anyway. Soaked in isopropyl from my interrogation earlier, it was the closest thing we had to a sterile dressing. Cautiously, as though approaching a wounded animal, I walked over to Hand.

"Let me see," I said gently, gesturing to the cut. She removed her hand and allowed me to apply the makeshift bandage to the wound, hissing in pain as I did so. "Just keep the pressure on it."

"Thank you," she said, after a minute. I nodded shortly. Then she asked, "How are you so on top of all this?"

"I've had a little experience," I told her slowly. "Though since this is your first time in enemy hands, I'd recommend you just fall back on your resistance training." She gave me a blank look, and a horrible thought occurred to me. "You have had resistance training, haven't you?"

"…some," she replied hesitantly.

"How much is some?"

"More than none. A little."

I bit my lip and thought back to the curriculum at the Academy of Operations. She'd have had basic SERE courses, but unless you go into either black ops or field ops, you don't need to take any other classes.

"The in and out of it is don't tell them anything," I said, giving her the Cliff's notes. "Don't even open your mouth. Once you start talking, you won't be able to stop. Especially after it gets physical. And when that happens, just …" Here I didn't know what to say. Basic interrogation resistance classes were mostly lecture; they never did tap-outs or simulations. She had no framework, nothing to build on. It was a miracle she'd held out this long. "Try to think about something nice to distract yourself, like your home or your family or a pet or just your favorite ice cream," I said. It sounded lame, but it was all I could think of.

Hand sat there, looking slightly stricken. Her eyes were unfocused. "Rocky Road," she said quietly.

"Huh?"

"My favorite ice cream. Rocky Road. What's yours?"

I furrowed my brow. The new Melinda didn't eat ice cream, or any sort of "fun" food, for that matter. I just went with the old Melinda's favorite, "Moose Tracks."

"Moose Tracks?" she asked, her eyes focusing. "There's seriously an ice cream called Moose Tracks? I've never heard of it."

"Oh, it's delicious," I said, remembering the old Melinda's mother taking her to Ben and Jerry's after getting shots at the doctor's office. "It's vanilla ice cream with crushed peanut butter cups and fudge in it."

"Wow. First thing I'm going to do after we get out of here is try some." Her face sobered, and she looked me right in the eye. "We are going to get out of here, aren't we?"

"Of course," I replied, though I had my doubts, especially if the food and water did turn out to be drugged. Although, my ten minutes had elapsed, and Hand wasn't showing any negative symptoms from the entire bar she'd eaten. Figuring it was safe, I picked up the other bar and cautiously unwrapped it. It was practically sawdust, and it tasted good, so good. The water was warm and stale and the best I'd ever had. I closed my eyes in pleasure.

Not feeling the need to speak after that, I stared at the slot in the door, idly wondering if my cat could fit through it. She was a feisty little bastard; I'd give her that, but even she had her limits. Still, I'd once found her wedged between the stove and the refrigerator in my kitchen. What she was doing there, I will never know.

"We're probably not going to get fed again, you know," Hand told me.

"I know that."

"Then why are you staring at the door?"

"Just trying to figure out if Parachute could fit through the slot," I said.

"Who's Parachute?"

"My cat." Though lately, she'd been more the neighbor's kid's cat, what with all the time I spent in the field.

She raised an eyebrow. "You have a cat?"

"Yeah. What, you have me figured for a dog person?"

"No, I just … well, you're a bit of a legend these days." She shifted uncomfortably and ran a hand through her matted hair.

"And legends can't have cats." I really hoped this conversation wasn't going where I thought it was going.

"That's not what I meant."

"I don't care what you meant," I said. "This isn't productive. We need to figure out how to get out of here." It was an abrupt segue, but then, I'm an abrupt person.

"We could ambush the guards when they come by," she suggested. "Between the two of us, we could probably take them."

I highly doubted it. We were underfed and dehydrated, and they had about a hundred pounds on each of us. We would have to get lucky, and I don't like relying on luck. Of course, if we had some sort of weapon … an idea began coming together in my mind. It wouldn't be easy, and in all fairness it was only half an idea at this point, but it was something.

"Care to share with the rest of the class?" Victoria asked. I looked up. I really didn't want to tell her until I had more than half an idea, but I had the feeling that if I didn't say anything, she'd just keep talking until Judgment Day.

"We need a weapon," I said.

"Well, in case you missed it, the guards don't carry any," Hand pointed out. "Probably so we can't steal them."

"He does," I stated. We both knew who I meant. While we weren't watching, even saying his name had become taboo.

Victoria looked down at her bloody, shredded sleeve, no doubt shuddering at the memory of what had done that to her. "So we steal one of his …"

I nodded. "I'll do it. Now shut up and let me think." Hand obediently shut her trap, though I had my doubts about how long it would stay shut.

Normally I'm less of a planner and more of a doer, but this situation required forethought, especially since I had a junior agent tagging along. I started going through scenarios, just spitballing, playing out the permutations.

There were a lot of permutations.

Most of them involved us getting killed.

The ones that didn't usually involved even worse outcomes.

Still, thinking back to Zurich and Sarajevo, I couldn't just wait around and do nothing. The first thing any SERE course teaches you is that if you're going to make your move, you have to make it soon, before you're incapacitated by starvation or injuries. We were already at less than a hundred per cent; it had been sloppy of me to delay even this long. Waiting for an opportunity to fall into your lap is a rookie mistake.

Stealth wasn't an option; there were too many unknowns. We were going to have to fight our way out. Distasteful as I find brute force, I knew it was the only option. Next time they interrogated me, I would steal a weapon, kill Bodho and his guards, take their keys, and free Hand. It wasn't too far from the interrogation room to our cell, so I could probably get to her before someone sounded the alarm. But what then? I briefly considered taking his blowtorch and trying to get out the window in the cell, but it was too narrow even for my slender frame. That left the long way. We were definitely underground, so we were going to have to find a way to the surface. We could disable or kill anyone we ran into along the way, then steal a truck or whatever kind of vehicle we could find, and make our way back to the mobile base.

But there were so many ways for it to go wrong, and I couldn't possibly plan for all of them. Even if I were on my own, it would be difficult. With Hand tagging along, it would be next to impossible.

But we had to try.


	6. Escape

**Author's note**: Thank you all for your wonderful feedback. It's very encouraging to know that people out there are reading my work. There have been some questions as to whether Phil Coulson will be involved. Rest assured; he's in chapter 9, though his part is smaller.

* * *

One of the first things new agents at the Academy of Operations are taught in hand-to-hand combat classes is grab releases, and one of the first grab releases taught is something called the snake. It's pretty simple. Say someone grabs your wrist. You hold your hand out flat and twist against the thumb, breaking the grip, just like a snake slithering up a tree. Then, if you are so inclined, you can keep on slithering up the tree until your thumb is in the person's eye, though I myself don't like doing that. It's gross, trust me.

But the snake, the snake is endlessly useful.

As the guards took me to the interrogation room, I made one last final sweep of the hallway, looking for anything relevant I might have missed (nothing). I made a mental note of where the guard with the keys kept them (left pocket). I walked slowly, but on my own two feet, so they'd keep their grip loose. My mind was racing as I mentally reviewed everything I'd have to do. The plan was Swiss cheese to begin with; I couldn't afford to mess anything up.

Bodho was waiting for me in the interrogation room, leering. Mentally, I leered back. He had a big surprise headed his way this time.

"Well, Agent May. So nice to see you again," he said, picking up his favorite knife, a four-inch double-edged blade with a carved handle. I suppressed a smile, thinking how nice it would be to eviscerate him with it. Poetic justice if I've ever seen it.

Bodho gestured to the chair, and the guards began leading me towards it. But one of them would have to let go in order to strap me down. That would be my opportunity. I took a deep breath. This was it, the moment of truth.

Quick as lightning, I twisted my hand against the guard's thumb, breaking his grip. I slammed my elbow into his face and felt cartilage smash. He reeled back, clutching his nose, and I took the opportunity to drive my knee into his groin. He doubled over and screamed in pain. Another quick kick to the head knocked him unconscious.

That left one more guard and Bodho. I grabbed the first thing I could off the tray, a glass bottle of hydrochloric acid, and threw it at the guard. My reaction time was off thanks to dehydration and blood loss, but it smashed against his chest anyway. He staggered back and howled in agony as the acid ate away at his flesh.

Now there was just Bodho. A frightened, almost desperate look ghosted across his face. I know that look; it's the look men get when the possibility of a woman beating them at their own game occurs to them. I resisted the urge to take him on hand-to-hand; he had a weapon and I was in no shape to be taking risks. Instead, I grabbed the longest knife I could from the table and took up an offensive stance. His eyes widened in fear; I was no longer his helpless captive, but an agent of SHIELD, ready to fight for my freedom and take back what was mine. Adrenaline was singing through my veins, and I barely felt the throbbing ache from all my badly healed cuts.

"You'll regret this!" he shouted. "I'll kill you, slowly and painfully!"

"You won't get a chance," I muttered, and went in slashing, intending to go straight for the abdominal aorta. If I cut it deep enough, he'd bleed out in under a minute.

Then a huge combat boot swept my legs out from under me, and I yelled in surprise. Instinctively, I tucked my chin and slapped the floor to break my fall, wincing as my palms struck concrete. My knife went flying, and I lay there, momentarily stunned. The guard I'd splashed with acid staggered to his feet, smirking at me.

Great. I should have made sure he was down for the count before I went for Bodho. I didn't even have the keys yet and the plan was already going south. Not ready to give up just yet, I turned over on my side, propped myself up on my elbows, and kept one foot in the air in a ground fighting stance. The two men moved in, predatory looks on their faces. Much as I hate to run away from a good fight, my priority was getting myself and Hand the hell out of Dodge. I crawled over to the unconscious body of the first guard, surreptitiously reached into his left pocket, and pulled out the keys.

"You've just made a very big mistake," Bodho said menacingly. He twirled his knife in his fingers. "I will take great pleasure in hearing you scream."

I curled up, keys clutched in my right hand, and waited for them to come in close. As soon as Bodho was in range, I kicked out as hard as I could, my foot slamming into his knee. My aim was off; the joint didn't break, but it was enough that he fell to the ground, yelling in pain. Staggering to my feet, I stumbled out the open door into the hallway. There was no turning back now.

My hands were shaking so badly from adrenaline that it took me several tries to unlock the cell door. When I opened it, I saw Hand waiting for me. I motioned for her to follow me, and we left the prison cell behind, hopefully for good.

This was the part where everything got vague. We had no idea where to go from here. It had sounded simpler somehow when I was going over it in my head the night before. Unless you counted the keys, we had no weapons, and despite their injuries Bodho and the guard I'd failed to incapacitate were no doubt headed our way now.

Realizing that the worst thing I could do now was hesitate, I began running down the corridor, heading away from the interrogation room. There was barely enough light to see by, but I trusted my instincts and kept going. I wedged the keys in between my fingers, the way my mom used to do when she was walking through a parking lot. It wasn't much, but at least I felt like I was doing something. Behind me, I could hear Hand's irregular footsteps on the concrete as she stumbled after me. I prayed she'd be able to keep up; I couldn't lose her. The new Melinda was distant, aloof, even unfriendly sometimes, but she wasn't heartless. She'd never abandon a fellow agent to die, not even an annoying rookie with bright red highlights in her hair.

We turned a corner, then another, then another, breath coming ragged in our chests. I heard angry shouting behind us, getting closer. I forced my feet to move faster, spurred on by the thought of freedom. Then my heart sank as we almost ran straight into a door with a tall, beefy man guarding it. He smiled menacingly, showing us a row of ugly, crooked teeth.

To my horror, Hand leaped forward and aimed a punch at his nose, telegraphing by a mile. He caught the punch easily and held her fist in mid air. I held my breath in horror; she was going to blow this whole thing. I'd told her yesterday to stand back and let me do all the heavy lifting. Then, to my surprise, she raised her foot and slammed it into his knee. I heard an ugly crunching sound, and he fell on his side, howling in pain. A quick kick to the head rendered him unconscious.

"Wow," I breathed. I almost couldn't believe it. The punch had been a feint; she'd wanted him to think she was inexperienced. Maybe I hadn't given her enough credit.

"Level three advanced in hand-to-hand," she said, breathing hard.

With the guard incapacitated, our next problem was the door. I'm a little on the impatient side, so my default method for dealing with doors is kicking them down, but this one was made of the same kind of reinforced steel as the one in our cell. We could hear our pursuers getting closer; they'd be here any minute.

"Try the keys," Hand said frantically, even though I was already shoving the first one into the lock. It didn't work. I tried the second. I could hear the men getting closer. There was only one key left. If there was a time to believe in God, it was now. I slid the final key into the lock and felt relief spread through my chest as the tumblers aligned and the mechanism turned. I muscled the door open with my shoulder, wincing as raw flesh connected with cold steel. It opened onto a concrete staircase, which ended in another door. We stumbled up the steps, Hand almost falling several times. Luckily, the first key I tried opened the second door. I dared to let myself believe that this might work, that we might go to sleep that night as free women.

If the new Melinda were one to smile, she'd have smiled when she stepped through the door at the top of the staircase. Lazy jungle breezes blew through the hot, muggy air. A thousand birds called through the trees. Sunlight poured down from the sky, bathing our faces in warmth. I drank it all in, feeling like I hadn't been outside in a year.

I shook myself mentally; this was not the time to be getting distracted. I glanced around me, assessing the situation. We were in a pseudo-military compound crawling with men and trucks and crates of supplies, all draped in camouflage netting and dotted with spare boxes of ammunition, most of it hollow-points. A lazy dirt road snaked away and vanished into the tree line.

Voices shouted in French, and I turned and saw three men running towards us. One of them walked with a distinct limp, and I had a nasty feeling I'd dislocated his knee a few days earlier when we'd been captured.

"Let's get out of here," said Victoria tensely. I noticed some military trucks a few hundred yards to our left and gestured to them. There were only a few people between us and them, and if we could get there fast enough and hijack one, we were in the clear. Adrenaline still pumping through our veins, we took off across the compound. We'd barely made it ten yards when Victoria began falling behind. I grabbed her wrist and pulled her along, but she stumbled and fell to her knees. Looking back, I saw the three men gaining on us.

"Come on, Victoria," I shouted. "Get up! Let's go!"

"Go without me," she said, her voice a hoarse whisper.

"Can it," I muttered, and hauled her up by her shirt collar. Most of my cuts had opened up again, but I barely noticed. I had bigger fish to fry.

One of said bigger fish apparently had a gun, because as I was pulling Victoria along by her hand, a shot rang out across the compound and I came perilously close to losing a large chunk of brain matter. More adrenaline surged through me, and yet I felt a strange sense of calm. Victoria and I ran, zigzagging across the open space to make ourselves harder to shoot. I had my eye on a Hummer parked near the edge of the forest; we had a clear path to it and it was only another dozen or so yards ahead.

Another bullet whined past my ear, and I put my head down and ran faster, still holding onto Victoria's hand. We were so close, ten yards from the truck, five, three—

A fist slammed into my face and knocked me flat on my back. I instinctively tucked my chin and broke the fall, but it was still enough to stun me. The same fist smashed into the side of Victoria's head and sent her reeling sideways. She fell to her knees, clutching her temple. I rolled into a ground fighting stance, readying myself for a fight, but the click of a gun safety being turned off stopped me.

I looked up the barrel of a .45 caliber semi-automatic into the smiling face of John Bodho.

"I told you that you would regret this," he said, his smile broadening. "Now, Agent May, I believe we shall finish what we started before we were so rudely interrupted." I felt strong hands pick me up. "Take her back to the interrogation room," Bodho ordered the hands. "Put the other one in a separate cell. She'll be next."

As the hands dragged me away, I looked back at Victoria, who was still rubbing her temple where Bodho had punched her. She raised her head and met my gaze, and the look of sheer terror in her eyes made me sick to my gut.

It was over. We'd lost.

* * *

**Author's note**: Once again, reviews are always appreciated, and I tend to update faster when I receive feedback.


	7. Torture

**Author's note**: Short and gruesome. This chapter carries a very heavy warning for torture and graphic violence.

* * *

The game changed after that. It wasn't about extracting information anymore; it was about revenge, about teaching us a lesson. We'd fought back; he'd won, and he wasn't about to let us to forget it.

He started with the cigarette lighter this time. No prelude, no questions, just the click of the flame igniting. It glowed yellow at the tip of the lighter, and he smiled, that sadistic grin I'd come to know and dread. The new Melinda didn't do fear, normally, but today was different. In these stone catacombs, the new Melinda wasn't in charge; John Bodho was.

The flame kissed my arm, the pain instantaneous. It built to a crescendo, then leveled out as I grew used to it, and finally died along with the nerve endings in my skin. He moved the lighter an inch to the left, and the cycle began again. I gritted my teeth, but did not scream. The pain wasn't the worst part, anyway. It was the scent of burning flesh filling the room, the sound of my skin sizzling like a summer barbecue, that turned my stomach.

"You can stop this, Agent May. Just start talking, and I'll turn the lighter off." As if I believed him. I could talk all I wanted, but he wouldn't stop hurting us until we were dead.

The pain died down, and he moved the lighter to the left again. Rinse and repeat.

When they threw me back into the cell that day, there was a long stripe of charred flesh on my right arm. I fell to the ground cradling it. Then they took Victoria away, and once I was certain they were out of earshot, I cried. I cried for the dead nerves in my arm and dead Melinda I'd left back in the ashes of an old apartment building in Bahrain. And then, as Victoria Hand's screams reached my ears, I cried for her, and the mess I'd gotten her into.

* * *

Fun fact: no one, no matter how indifferent she is to pain or how much resistance training she's had, can keep from screaming when a blowtorch is being held to her skin. At first, I'd been determined to swallow the pain, no matter how great it was, but the moment the blue-hot flame touched my flesh, I knew it would be a hopeless battle. By the time he stopped give the torch a chance to cool off, my throat was raw.

He stood behind me and held the flame to my back, moving it back and forth in a slow zigzag. I was going to need skin grafts.

* * *

I coughed up a lungful of water, sucking in as much air as I could before my head was forced into the bucket again. I struggled against the beefy hands holding me down, but it was a pointless waste of energy. My hands and feet were bound, so I couldn't fight. My lungs burned with the desperate, insatiable desire to _breathe. _Panic took over, and I writhed and twisted and begged whatever deities existed to give me just a little more air. Finally, I surrendered myself to the blackness flickering at the edges of my vision and passed out.

I came to lying on my side, water running out of my open mouth and nose. A boot kicked me, and I curled up, clutching my stomach. A voice yelled at me, telling me to start talking.

"My name is Melinda May," I said, my voice barely a whisper. "I am an agent of SHIELD. And I will never tell you anything." The boot kicked me again, and my head was forced back underwater with a splash.

* * *

"Just tell us, Agent May." _Zap_.

"It's your choice whether this continues or not, Agent May." _Zap_.

"We can stop any time, Agent May." _Zap_.

"You will talk, Agent May." _Zap_.

* * *

When the clank of the deadbolt indicated it was time for more pain, I was almost glad. I'd been almost anticipating these sessions lately, wanting to get them over with as soon as possible. The waiting was the real torture, all alone in a stone room, listening to Bodho hurting Hand. By now I knew the sound of her screams as well as I knew chen 4 step. Someone once said that where there's life there's hope. That person had obviously never heard Victoria Hand scream. I almost found myself hoping she would die. No one deserved what Bodho was putting her through.

They had to pick me up and drag me; I was too weak to support my own weight. I coughed weakly, my lungs still waterlogged from the drowning. My heart began racing as we neared the interrogation room, but I didn't have the energy to be properly afraid. Their arms released me; leather straps replaced them. A dark blanket of hopelessness settled over me. Blinking back tears, I steeled myself and waited for pain.

I wanted my mom.

* * *

**Author's note:** Please leave a review. I tend to update faster when I get feedback.


	8. Confession

After I'd learned firsthand what a hydrochloric acid burn felt like, I found Victoria waiting for me back at my cell, sitting in a corner with her knees drawn up to her chest. She looked like hell. She'd lost a lot of weight; her cheeks were sunken in, and her eyes were dull and bloodshot. She was still wearing the remains of her clothing, but parts of it had been cut away to expose the skin for Bodho. There were long stripes of angry, burned flesh running across her torso, and her left eye was swollen almost shut. Her lips were pale and cracked, and her maroon-streaked hair hung limply in her grimy face. I wondered if I looked that bad. I probably did.

"Hey," she said, her voice dry and raspy.

"Hey yourself," I replied, mine equally hoarse. I coughed a few times and sat up, clearing my throat. And then I did something very uncharacteristic. I crawled on my hands and knees over to where she was sitting and propped myself next to her, closer than the new Melinda was usually comfortable with. But after the long days in the cell by myself, I longed for human companionship, even hers.

"Saved you some water." She offered me a half-empty plastic bottle. I drank it hungrily. It wasn't enough, not nearly enough.

Silence passed between us, interrupted only by an occasional coughing fit from me. I began tracing the cracks in the wall, watching them form cats, dogs, sailboats, the prison version of cloud watching. I had used it to amuse myself during my time in solitary confinement, both here and in that hellhole outside Sarajevo. Eventually, I knew, the cracks would cease to form new patterns, and I would be left with the same cats, dogs, and sailboats I'd seen the day before. In Sarajevo, I had hit the wall repeatedly, trying to make new cracks, but had succeeding only in scraping my knuckles down to the bone. It had been a welcome diversion nonetheless.

"Victoria?" I asked, after a while.

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

"What for?"

"Throwing that knife the day of the stakeout. You said I could thank you later, so …"

"My pleasure," she assured me.

But I knew she was thinking the same thing I was. We'd been different people back then, whole, or at least only slightly cracked. It felt like a lifetime ago, and the mere notion that a time before this even existed, a time when Victoria had held something as empowering as a knife, seemed absurd.

"I'm sorry we couldn't escape," I said. "I should have seen him."

"It's okay. I didn't see him either. I think he was waiting behind the truck or something." She rubbed her shoulder and moved it experimentally, wincing in pain as she did so.

"Shoulder okay?" I asked.

She shook her head. "Think they wrenched it or something last time they took me."

"Oh."

I started coughing again, razors tearing through the inside of my lungs, the spasms making me painfully aware of every injury. My head was pounding and my muscles ached from the electrocution. Thanks to malnutrition, none of my cuts or burns were healing properly, and they ached and stung with various degrees of intensity. The bruises I had accumulated over the past few days throbbed, especially the one on my face from where Bodho had punched me. I paused to suck in air, then doubled over coughing again.

"I don't like the sound of that," said Victoria, rubbing my back in one of the few places that wasn't covered in burns. I was too sick to mind the touch.

I nodded. "I think I have pneu—" Another coughing fit cut me off, and she kept rubbing my back as I spat up mucus and blood. Yep. Definitely pneumonia.

"It's okay," she whispered, her hand still between my shoulder blades. We both knew it was a lie, but I still felt a little better. I shivered and gingerly hugged myself. I was sick and cold and I hurt and I just wanted to go home.

"I'm sorry," I said, after another long silence.

"You've got nothing to be sorry for," she assured me.

"I do. Back there on the stakeout, and this whole mission, the way I treated you, that was unfair."

"It's fine," she said, giving a one-shouldered shrug. "I know I'm kind of out of my depth here. I don't think I'm cut out for life in the trenches."

I scoffed. "Don't be stupid. You obviously know your way around hand-to-hand combat and knife-throwing. Not to mention that you held out under torture with almost no resistance training. You're a natural."

"Yeah, and compared to the Cav—compared to you, I'm nothing."

"I was nothing once," I admitted. "You want to hear about my first field mission?"

She smirked. "Wouldn't miss it."

I took a deep breath, feeling my chest rattle. This incident used to be in the unmitigated disasters file, until Zurich, Sarajevo, and a few missions in the Middle East gave me some perspective. "Well," I began, "it was supposed to be an in-and-out undercover mission. There was a restaurant we thought might be a front for an arms smuggling operation, so we sent some agents in disguised as waiters, kitchen staff, a few customers. I was a waitress. I looked stupid.

"I spent the morning listening to people complaining about the undercover kitchen staff messing up their orders—Duvall might be a crack shot, but he can barely boil water—and trying to avoid wandering hands."

She gave me a sympathetic look; most women who went through ops training had been around the block a few times when it came to sexual harassment.

I continued, "One of the people we suspected of being involved with the arms smugglers came in the front door and started talking to the head waiter. It sounded like he was giving some kind of passphrase, so our handler told us to be ready. Except I had my earpiece turned way up so I could hear over the restaurant noise. When I heard the handler's voice, it was so loud that I yelled, grabbed the earpiece, yanked it out, and spilled a guy's coffee all over the floor."

Victoria winced. "Ouch."

"Oh, you think that was bad. The head waiter saw the earpiece and made us. Pulled a gun, grabbed me, and held it to my head. I don't think I've ever been more scared in my life."

Something about this whole conversation suddenly struck me as odd. I never talked about that op; I didn't like remembering how badly I'd screwed up. And why was I admitting I'd been scared? The new Melinda would have her teeth pulled without anesthesia before admitting to being scared.

"So what happened then?"

"Huh?" I asked, looking up.

"You had a gun to your head. What happened after that?"

The injuries and malnutrition must have really done a number on my head, because I kept talking. "There was a gunshot from behind us and the guy's head exploded. I got brain matter all over my face."

Victoria's eyes widened.

"Like I said, Duvall's a crack shot," I said with a dry, brittle laugh.

"Ick," she grimaced. "Double ick."

I shrugged, then winced as a cut on my collar opened up and started suppurating. Speaking of ick.

"That op was when I first met Phil Coulson," I mused, speaking more to myself than to her. "After we'd cleared everything up, done our debriefing, I went back to the motel we were staying at and showered for about an hour. Even after I was done, I still felt dirty, like that man's brain matter was still all over me. It didn't seem real. One minute, he was alive, and then the next, everything that made him who he was was splattered all over the room. And I thought that maybe if I'd just kept the volume on my earpiece down, he'd still be alive."

"Why'd you care?" Victoria asked. "He would've killed you."

"I know. But that doesn't mean I felt good about it. I went outside to get some air and ended up sitting on the steps of the motel with my head in my hands. And then suddenly there was this guy in a suit sitting next to me. I'd seen him before, but we'd never worked together."

"And that was Coulson?"

"Yeah. We talked for a while, and he told me some really bad jokes. I guess he was trying to cheer me up. But we just sort of clicked, if that makes sense, and we stuck together after that. He had a couple of friends in Personnel, and he asked them to assign us together as much as they could." I felt a smile pulling at the corners of my mouth as I remembered him, his smiling face, his quiet voice, his love of antiques and collectables.

"Did you ever ..?"

I shook my head, still smiling. "No. It was almost … more than that."

My smile disappeared when I realized I'd just used the past tense.

"I've never had anyone like that," she said, oblivious to my Freudian slip. "As an adult, I mean. I had a cousin growing up, though. We were pretty close. My dad was in the USAF, and I'd stay with her family while he was away. We were like sisters, Miracle and me."

"Unusual name," I observed.

"It was true, though. She had some kind of really bad brain bleed when she was born, and the doctors said that even if she made it out of the NICU, she was going to be severely disabled. Like, can't walk or talk or see or think kind of disabled."

"They were wrong, I take it."

"She got honors in middle and high school, played the lead in _The Glass Menagerie,_ and rode horses on the weekends. We both did, actually."

"Horses?" I asked. I could barely picture Victoria as a teenager, much less on horseback.

"Yeah. Her family owned a ranch. Almost a hundred acres of Kentucky bluegrass country. We used to pack a lunch and ride out to this little stream and have a picnic under a tree. And after we were done, we'd sometimes take off our shoes and socks, roll up our pants, and go wading. She was always trying to catch fish with her bare hands. I kept telling her it wasn't possible, but she always said that miracles happen all the time."

"She ever catch one?" I asked.

"Never a fish. Bunch of turtles and a few frogs, though. Once she caught a snake and we brought it home. Aunt Kerry almost had a heart attack." She gave a short laugh as she recalled the memory.

"Do you still see her?" I asked.

Victoria looked down at her lap and shook her head. "She, uh, she died. Fell off a horse on a jumps course. Killed instantly."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. She had a nice life. Nineteen good years when she wasn't supposed to have any at all. Besides, that was a long time ago."

But that didn't make it any easier to bear, and we both knew it.

"What do you think happens after we die?" she asked.

I looked up. "I don't know. I've never given it much thought."

"But you're a specialist. You've probably had more near-death experiences than you can count."

I shrugged. "I have. But I don't dwell on it. I just get the mission done."

"But when you go in, don't you ever think, This mission could be my last?"

"It's ... complicated," I said slowly, searching for the right words. "It's true; you never know when your number's going to come up. But if you spend the whole mission trying not to get killed, you'll hesitate, make mistakes. And then you'll definitely screw something up."

"So you're not scared of dying?"

"I didn't say that," I whispered.

"I watched a guy die once," she said, sitting upright. "Back when I was stationed at the Fridge. Dixon, his name was Michael Dixon."

"How'd he die?" I asked.

"Well, we keep a lot of people on the Index there, the really dangerous ones, you know?"

I nodded. I knew where this was going.

"There was this one guy who could kill you just by touching you. I don't know all the science behind it, but basically his skin was poisonous. So one day, I was sitting in my office catching up on paperwork when the alarms went off. Technically I was an administrator, so it wasn't any of my business, but I still wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Morbid curiosity, I guess. I ran down to the detention block, and I saw the door to this guy's cell hanging open, and these two guards lying on the floor. One of them was dead; I guess he'd gotten a larger dose of the poison, but the other was still alive. His skin was this ashy blue color, and he was gasping and wheezing like he couldn't breathe." She paused and shook her head. "He died right in front of me. I watched the light go out of his eyes. And then there was just a body. I think it was the first time I'd ever seen a dead person outside a funeral home."

"Did they catch the guy?" I asked, after a minute.

She nodded. "No one else died, thank God. But I just remember that guard looking up at me, like he was begging me to save his life. And I couldn't do anything; I didn't have any medical training; hell, I barely had any ops training. And I just thought that maybe, if I hadn't been sitting on my ass doing paperwork, I could've done something."

"It wasn't your fault," I said automatically. It isn't unusual for survivors of an accident to blame themselves, whether or not they could've done anything to help, and I've heard the if-only spiel a hundred times from colleagues.

"I know that," she told me. "But I just felt so useless. I mean, the whole point of SHIELD is to protect, and I wasn't protecting anyone by signing stuff in triplicate."

"Is that why you transferred to Operations?"

She nodded. "I wanted to make a difference. Maybe even save someone's life."

"Did you ever—" I started to say, but then I started coughing violently, my lungs staging a full-fledged rebellion against whatever horrible strain of jungle bacteria was growing inside them.

"Hey, hey, shh," Victoria said, rubbing my back again. "Deep breaths; it's okay."

"I doubt it," I replied, spitting out a mouthful of sputum.

We were dead women; I'd known that on some level since our escape attempt had failed. We both did, come to think of it. The past hour or so had been our last confession. I never would have told her about the undercover op, or meeting Coulson, or any of the rest, if I thought we had any hope of seeing daylight again. I suspected the same was true for her.

The prospect of death was almost welcome. I didn't particularly want to die, but I also didn't want to go back to that room and face Bodho again. At this point, an end to life meant nothing more than an end to pain. Maybe I'd see my dad, or my old partner, or any one of the numerous people I knew who had died. Victoria could see Miracle. And we'd never have to face Bodho again because he was going straight to Hell ...

"May? May, I need you to stay with me," I heard Victoria say. My eyes focused again, and I swam up out of a foggy headspace I hadn't even noticed I was in. "Come on; look at me." I looked, but she didn't seem real. I was dissociating; it had happened a few times before, but never this badly.

"I broke my wrist once, when I was at the Academy," Victoria began. "Third year. Fell off the ropes course. It hurt like hell, and I went to the infirmary to get it set. And while I was waiting for the cast to dry, there was some kind of accident, and like twenty first-year cadets came in with flash burns. It was all superficial, but they were really scared, so I got a big black Sharpie and had them all sign my cast. A couple of them drew some pretty, um, inappropriate stuff on there, and when my SO saw it, he just marched off to the administrative offices and came back with a big old thing of white-out. Once I'd covered up all the indecent stuff, he asked if he could sign the cast too. Drew a little smiley face."

There wasn't much point to the story, but her voice was keeping me here, keeping me solid.

She started another story. "I had this pet rabbit when I was a kid. I called him Peter, you know, after the children's book …"

Victoria kept talking, telling story after story, some about her childhood, some from the Academy, and some were just folk tales or fables she happened to know. She never took her hand off my back either; her touch and the sound of her voice were the only things that kept me holding on. I don't know how much time passed, but eventually she fell silent. The only sound in the room was the crackle of mucus as I inhaled and exhaled. I looked over and noticed Victoria's eyelids drooping.

"Hey," I said, poking her with my elbow.

"May?" Victoria asked sleepily.

"Right here."

"I'm tired." She moved forward and lay down on the floor.

I leaned in closer to her and, hesitant, touched her forehead. She was burning up. Despite the antiseptic Bodho had been soaking us in, one of her injuries must have gotten infected. I couldn't let her sleep.

"Uh-uh. Stay awake. Victoria, stay with me."

"I can't," she protested, her voice weak and slurred. "Wanna go to sleep."

"No sleeping," I said as firmly as I could, though I realized that I was as tired as she was.

"Just a few minutes?" she implored.

"No. You go to sleep, you'll never wake up."

"That such a bad thing?" she murmured.

She was right, and I knew it. I'd known it all along.

"No," I conceded. "No, it wouldn't be. In fact, I think I'll join you."

So I settled down next to her, careful of my various injuries, and we curled into each other for warmth. We lay there, shattered bodies and shattered souls on a cold concrete floor. This really isn't so bad, I thought, as I felt myself slipping away. Before the darkness claimed me, I reached out next to me. My hand found Victoria's, and she squeezed it reassuringly. Then the world faded to black.

* * *

**Author's note**: Thank you to all who have given feedback. You've kept me motivated, and seeing new reviews is the highlight of my dreary existence. It's been great writing for you guys. - JC


	9. Rescue

A distant explosion ripped off the veil of sleep, and I jerked awake with a sharp intake of breath. I was on the floor, curled up next to Victoria, holding her hand. She was alive; I could feel a faint, thready pulse in her wrist. And that meant I was probably alive too. Which was unfortunate; my skin screamed with the pain of a thousand cuts and burns; my face throbbed, and sandpaper scraped the inside of my lungs with every breath. I tried to give an exasperated sigh, but it turned into a cough, and I moaned in pain.

Another explosion, nearer this time, then faint voices shouting, then another explosion. _Blasting charges. _Someone was blowing up doors. Hope blossomed in my chest, and I sat up as best I could.

"Victoria, wake up," I said urgently, squeezing her hand. "Come on, up. We need to get away from the door." Mucus crackled in my throat as I spoke, and I winced at the sound of my own voice. It was weak, broken, barely there.

"I can't, please, just let me sleep," Victoria moaned. "My stomach hurts, May, it hurts so bad." Shit. One of Bodho's men had kicked her yesterday and now she was probably bleeding internally. She shouldn't be moving around, but we hardly had a choice. If someone blew the door to our cell, the force of the blast would kill us unless we got out of the way.

"Get up, Victoria," I told her, trying to make it sound like an order and missing by a mile. I rose to my feet, desperately sucking air into my burning lungs. "We have to get away from the door, and I am not going to carry you. Victoria Hand, _get up._"

She pushed herself into a sitting position, stifling a cry and clutching her stomach. Slowly, carefully, she staggered to her feet, practically bent double from the pain in her abdomen. I put my hand around her shoulder, careful not to touch any of the raw skin, and together we stumbled to the far corner of the cell. It was only a few feet, but it felt like a thousand miles. Each step we took without falling was a victory, until we were far enough away from the door that we wouldn't be hurt. I reached my hand out and braced myself against the wall. My legs shook, and I fell to my knees, choking on pain.

Another blasting charge went off, and I could hear voices shouting, coming closer. I couldn't tell exactly what they were saying, but they were speaking English.

"It's an extraction team," Victoria breathed, as though it were some sort of exotic bird.

"It sure is." I felt a smile pulling at the corners of my mouth, the first one in what felt like years. This would all be over in a few hours. We could go home. Soon this hell would be a distant memory. I would see Phil again, and Victoria would go on to become one of the finest agents SHIELD had ever seen. After all this, we were finally going to get our lives back. My smile widened, and I slowly rose to my feet again, not because I had to, but because Agent Melinda May of SHIELD would never let herself be found crumpled on the floor, bloody and broken. I was a woman, tall, proud, strong, and maybe some of that was still there, even after all Bodho had done to me.

Hurried footsteps approached the door, and I gripped Victoria's hand tightly and turned my face away, bracing myself for the blast. But it never came. There was only the all too familiar sound of a key in the lock, and the rasp of the deadbolt sliding away. I felt a sudden chill go through me. An extraction team wouldn't have had time for keys; they would have simply blown the door. Fear spread cold acid through my stomach, and my breath caught in my throat.

The door swung open with a scream of ungreased hinges to reveal a face I'd hoped I would never have to see again.

"Hello Agent May, Agent Hand," John Bodho said, flashing us a vicious, predatory smile. He held up a handgun and pointed it squarely at Victoria's chest. "It seems your friends have come for you. A shame all they'll find is your bodies." He gave a cruel, triumphant laugh and brandished his gun. "I was going to kill you today anyway, since you're not as much fun to play with anymore," he continued. "Perhaps take you outside, let you see the sun one last time before I made you dig your own graves. Much as I hate to have to rush things, it can't be helped."

"No," Victoria whimpered. "No, please, don't."

"Pathetic," he spat. "On your knees, both of you."

It couldn't end this way. We couldn't die now, not with rescue just seconds away. We hadn't endured all that pain, survived all that hardship, only to meet our end in a dark, lonely prison cell at the hands of a psychopath.

And not on our knees. We would not die on our knees.

Melinda May faded into the background as the Cavalry reared her ugly head.

I lunged forward, grabbing his gun hand and twisting it, hard. The weapon fell from his grasp and clattered to the ground. Bodho immediately dove for it, but I stepped in, blocking his path. He turned to face me, hands raised. I aimed a palm-heel strike at his nose, but my timing was off by a mile, and he caught my hand and shoved me against the wall. Lungs burning, head spinning, I pushed off from the wall and managed a weak punch to the face. He only laughed and knocked me to the floor with ease. I came up to my hands and knees, trying to stand again, but he kicked me, hard, and I heard ribs crack. But the Cavalry felt no pain. She only rose to her feet, hands up in a guard. Bodho knocked me to the floor again, then turned his attention to Victoria, who was braced against the wall, clutching her stomach.

"Look at me," he ordered. "I want to see your face when you die."

Wheezing from exertion and lack of oxygen, I stumbled to my feet. I could barely stand, and my ribs shot red-hot pain up my side every time I moved, but I couldn't let him kill her. I'd let her down enough already; I wasn't going to fail her now.

Stumbling forward, I grabbed Bodho's shirt with both hands and pulled him down. My knee found his solar plexus and he doubled over in pain. I pushed him backwards with all my strength, and he tumbled to the ground, landing flat on his back. He was mine now, at my mercy, and it was such a wonderful feeling, finally being the one in control.

With victory singing through my veins, I raised my foot to crush his throat.

But I was a second too late, and my tattered boot hit the concrete floor with an empty thud. Bodho rolled away and grabbed his gun, then turned over on his back, weapon raised. After all I had survived, his insane, triumphant grin would be the last thing I ever saw. I tasted ashes, bitter and hopeless in my mouth. I'd been crazy to think I could beat him, a bleeding, shattered remnant of what was once an agent.

"Please," I begged. "Please, not like this."

He didn't reply. He didn't need to. He simply leveled the weapon, took his aim, and—

The sound of a gunshot rang through the room. Bright red blood sprayed the walls in slow motion. My vision swam, and the last thing I saw was the floor rushing toward me.

* * *

"Shh, May, you're going to be all right." That voice. I knew that voice. Quiet, gentle, familiar. "It's all right; I've got you."

"Phil?" I whispered, almost afraid to hope.

"It's me." I opened my eyes and saw him, that smiling, creased face looking down at me, blue eyes full of concern.

"You're dead?" I asked.

"No, Melinda. You're alive."

* * *

I woke up slowly, consciousness filtering back in pieces. My eyelids fluttered, and I opened them to a world vastly different from the one I'd left. The murmur of a dozen voices rippled in the background, and harsh fluorescent lights assaulted my eyes. The air smelled of cheap air freshener and antiseptic, and the surface beneath me was warm and soft and dry. Monitors beeped steadily, keeping time with my heartbeat. There was an IV line snaking out from under my collarbone, and oxygen from a nasal cannula tickled the inside of my nose. Everything still hurt, but it was the dull, muted kind of pain that came with large doses of painkillers. I moved my arm experimentally and felt the rustle of gauze, the pull of sutures and medical tape.

I glanced to my side and saw Phil Coulson sitting in a folding chair next to my bed, a calm, patient expression on his face. When he saw I was awake, he smiled broadly, and I felt my heart ache. I never thought I'd see that smile again.

"Welcome back," he whispered, leaning forward.

"What's going on?" I asked. He looked at me strangely, and I realized I'd spoken in Mandarin. I repeated the question, feeling a slight rush of adrenaline. It was a post-traumatic reflex, one I'd experienced before, though never this badly. I knew I was safe; Phil was here, and I was obviously in some sort of medical facility, but my body was still expecting another assault.

Still expecting him, his knives and acid and blowtorch and bucket of bacteria-infested water. My breath caught in my throat, and the heart monitor's beeping sped up angrily. God, that sound was annoying. I tried to sit up with the vague intention of breaking it, but Phil gently pushed me back down, and between my injuries and the painkillers, I was in no condition to put up a fight.

"You're in the infirmary back at the Hub, and you're going to be fine," he said softly. "You were intubated for a while because you weren't getting enough oxygen, but they took you off the ventilator this morning, and your lungs are sounding pretty clear." It was true; it didn't hurt as much to breathe, and my chest didn't rattle when I inhaled.

"V-v-victoria?" I asked, tripping over the words, half afraid of the answer.

"Agent Hand's going to be okay," he assured me. I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. "They had to take out her spleen, and she was septic for a while, but she's doing fine." He sobered. "Another twelve hours and she wouldn't have made it. You did good out there, Melinda."

But I hadn't. In the end, it was the extraction team who'd pulled us out, not me. I hadn't done a damn thing except get us captured in the first place and then screw up our escape. I deserved no praise. Hell, I deserved a demotion. No, the real hero was Victoria. She'd stayed strong the entire time, held up under torture with no training, kept me sane when I felt like I was losing my mind. She was the one who'd done good out there, not I.

Phil spoke again. "How are you feeling?"

"Like shit. Bodho … the man with the gun …"

"Dead. Agent Garrett shot him."

I gave a choked laugh, dry and humorless. "Thought he shot me."

"No. You're okay. He can't hurt you anymore. Melinda, it's over."

It didn't feel over. And I'd been in Operations long enough, seen enough carnage, to know that it would never be over. When stuff like this, like Bahrain and Zurich and Sarajevo happened, there was always fallout. Major fallout. And I would never truly recover. And just for a second, I wondered if maybe it would've been better if Garrett had arrived just a second or two later, if Bodho had taken that shot and killed me, finished the job he'd started. Maybe it was better to be dead than shattered.

"Phil?" I asked, my voice sounding weak and broken.

"I'm here," he assured me.

"Don't go?"

"Wouldn't dream of it."

I felt tears pricking at the corners of my eyes, and I let them fall, because it was okay to cry in front of him. And I think that was when I figured it out, why Coulson and I were so close. It was because he let me see him at his most vulnerable, and I let him see me at mine. He'd let me care for him after the meteorite incident in Florida, let me pull him out from under the rubble and set his broken arm. I sat with him when the nightmares woke him up yelling for days afterwards, talking soothingly and telling him he was safe until he calmed down. And then a year later, he saw me come out of the warehouse in Zurich, shaking and crying with blood running down my shirt. After debriefing, he gave me his sweatshirt to wear, since my own clothes had been cut away by the medics who treated me. I hadn't even tried to keep my mask on; I was too exhausted and I just didn't care.

I had shown him this side of me, the part I kept so carefully guarded, and he'd accepted it, then shown me the same.

"Shh, it's okay," Phil whispered. "I've got you."

I felt him pick up my hand and rub the back of it with his thumb, the way he always did when I was sick or hurt. It was gentle, calming, like sedation. They could shoot whatever they wanted into my arm, but sometimes there was just no substitute for a human touch. He sat with me for a while, told me a couple of his patented really bad jokes, including the one about the man who was afraid of flying, and wondered aloud where he could find the last Captain America trading card he was missing. I didn't really listen, but let the soft, steady sound of his voice wash over me.

A nurse with tacky, bleach-blond hair and too much lipstick came by at some point and told him that visiting hours were over, and that I needed my rest. He kindly, calmly told her where to put her visiting hours. Startled by his audacity, she quickly regained her composure and walked away in a huff, muttering something about reporting him to her supervisor.

"Thanks," I whispered, once she was gone.

He smiled gently. "I promised I wouldn't go. You need anything? Ice chips, something to eat?"

"No. Just … keep talking."

"Okay. Why did the chicken cross the playground?"

I don't know how long he sat there, just whispering to me, holding my hand, assuring me that everything was going to be okay. Sometimes I saw a flash of Bodho's sadistic grin, or heard a whisper of Congolese French, and gripped his hand even tighter. A whimper escaped my lips.

Phil reached up and stroked my hair. "You're okay; you're safe," he said soothingly.

"Doesn't feel like it."

"These things take time."

"I guess."

"Try and get some rest. You'll feel better in the morning. And I'll be right here when you wake up."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

* * *

**Author's Note**: Thank you for all the feedback on Chapter 8. I'm glad you liked it. MaariSiqueira, thanks for suggesting I include Phil. I originally wasn't going to give him such a big part, but I think Melinda needed him in this chapter.


	10. Aftermath

**Author's note: **This chapter contains a trigger warning for self-injury and eating disorders.

* * *

We'd been prisoners in John Bodho's compound for twelve days. I had two cracked ribs, a concussion, hemorrhagic pneumonia in both lungs, a broken zygomatic arch, and second and third degree burns, some of which were chemical, to fifteen per cent of my body. I'd needed skin grafts on my back and shoulders, thirty-one stitches, and lost nineteen pounds. Hand had sustained second degree burns, several of which were infected, to nine per cent of her body, a ruptured spleen, a torn rotator cuff, a fractured orbit, and multiple contusions. She'd had a splenectomy, forty stitches, and lost twenty-two pounds. We were both severely dehydrated and malnourished. Coulson and Duvall had reached the ridge shortly after we'd been taken, and Johnson and Garrett had made their way back to base camp and radioed for backup. Bodho's compound was well-hidden, but they had eventually been able to find it using thermal imaging. Bodho and his smuggling operation had been shut down, but SHIELD didn't know if they were working alone or were part of a larger organization. This much they told me at debriefing.

What they didn't tell me at debriefing was that I would wake up screaming every night for twelve days straight. They didn't tell me that I would make a habit of getting dressed with my eyes closed so I wouldn't have to see all the scars. They didn't tell me that the smell of meat cooking would make me throw up. That I would flinch anytime someone tried to touch me, even Phil. That I would sleep with the lights on like a four-year-old afraid of the dark. This, they did not tell me.

The old Melinda was well and truly gone. Bahrain had broken her; Bodho had shattered her. I would never be that person again.

I hadn't seen Hand since the rescue, and while I knew she was safe, I still felt a palpable sense of relief when I saw her at debriefing. She cleaned up nicely; her torn, bloody clothing had been exchanged for a pencil skirt and blouse; her maroon-streaked hair was neatly combed, and she had on black framed glasses to replace her lost contact lenses. She even managed to look dignified with her arm in a sling. She'd spoken in stiff, clipped sentences, giving facts, nothing else, her demeanor cold and detached.

A few days later, Phil told me that she had taken a transfer to the Slingshot. She left without saying goodbye. I didn't mind. The person I'd seen at debriefing was a far cry from the Victoria Hand I knew from Bodho's prison, the dirty, disheveled woman who sat against the wall next to me and heard my confessions, who lay down beside me so we could die together. I hardly recognized this person, much less knew how to talk to her.

Since I wasn't on active duty, and wouldn't be for the foreseeable future, I had very little to do. Had I been strong enough, I would have spent my free time on the mats, sparring anyone and everyone I could con into going a few rounds with me. But as it was, I could barely get through a basic tai chi form, much less anything as strenuous as judo or kajukenbo.

Besides, I was tired, not I-need-some-coffee tired, but the filthy, pathetic kind of tired that seeps into your bones and makes you weigh a thousand pounds. I would lie on my back, staring at the ceiling for hours at a time, playing the old prison cloud watching game with the cracks in the plaster. Occasionally I would toy with the idea of getting up, maybe going to brush my hair, but it always seemed like too much trouble. It was easier just to lie on top of my scratchy, standard-issue blanket, letting the world go on without me.

A month or so after the rescue, I was washing my hands when I caught sight of myself in the bathroom mirror. I hadn't seen my reflection since, well, since before Bahrain, and I barely recognized the woman staring back at me. Her cheeks were sunken in, her hair stringy and limp, and her dull eyes underscored by dark smudges. She looked pathetic, helpless, like a starving child. I gripped the edges of the sink until my knuckles turned white.

"You're disgusting," I hissed at the woman in the mirror. "Disgusting and weak. You should have died back there."

From then on, I washed my hands with my eyes closed.

In a pathetic attempt to take back some control, I started forcing myself to eat more protein and doing some light exercise, trying to get myself back into something resembling fighting shape. It was slow going at first; I could barely even do a push-up. But I developed a routine and stuck to it, taking comfort in its predictability. I started going to the gym three times a week, at night, so I would be alone. I wasn't anywhere near up to full strength; running more than half a mile on the track had me bent over, wheezing desperately, and my reflexes were completely shot. Sometimes I dreaded my workouts, dreaded finding that I could no longer do something I'd once taken for granted. But I went anyway, because it beat lying awake at night, seeing Bodho's sadistic grin every time I closed my eyes.

One night, after failing once again to run a mile in under nine minutes, I took the boxing tape off my hands and shredded my knuckles on the heavyweight punching bag. The pain barely registered; it was nothing compared to what I felt inside. Wiping off the blood for the benefit of posterity, I headed through the darkened hallways to the medical wing to scare up some gauze and antiseptic, preferably without anyone seeing me and sending me to the department psychiatrist.

As I was rooting through the supply cabinet, I noticed a grubby, half-empty bottle of isopropyl alcohol sitting by itself next to some surgical scalpels. That was all it took. The memories came flooding back, vivid flashbacks of blood running down my leg, skin sizzling from acid, coughing up water, the hiss of a blowtorch, Victoria's screams, and Bodho's mocking voice, Agent May, Agent May, Agent May. But I didn't feel like an agent. I felt like a failure, a helpless child who couldn't even run a mile at a decent pace. I'd let him control me, strip away my dignity and my pride until there was nothing left but a shell. I'd begged for my life. Begged. Agents of SHIELD don't beg. So what did that make me?

It made me a coward.

All the anger and fear and shame and a million other emotions I couldn't even begin to identify boiled up in my chest until it was all I could do to keep from screaming. On impulse, I grabbed a scalpel and desperately ripped it out of the sterile packaging. I yanked up my sleeve and sank the blade into my flesh. Pain shot through my arm, but it was my pain, done by my hand, not his. I caught my breath, gasping as I saw the blood filling the deep trench I'd dug in my forearm. The blood ran down my arm and stained my clothes dark red, but that was okay, because I chose to bleed. I pushed up my other sleeve and was about to slash open my right arm when a voice stopped me.

"Don't."

I turned around. A tall, dark-haired woman stood in the doorway of the supply room. I recognized her; it was Maria Hill. I knew her vaguely; we'd been in a few classes together at the Academy and had been part of the same task force a few years ago, but we'd never been close. Quickly, I slipped the scalpel into the back pocket of my jeans and hid my arm behind my back, praying she hadn't seen the blood.

"Don't what?" I asked, the picture of innocence, or at least I hoped so. She couldn't see me like this; she'd report me to SHIELD psych for sure, and that was the last thing I needed right now.

She approached me, walking slowly, her posture carefully non-threatening. "Can I see?" she asked.

"See what?"

"I'm serious, May; you might need stitches." Her voice softened, and she whispered, "Please."

Something about the way she spoke persuaded me to drop my guard. She wasn't being overly sympathetic or judgmental, and she was right; I might need sutures. Slowly, cautiously, I showed her the gash in my wrist, looking down, too ashamed to meet her eyes. Carefully, without touching me, Hill examined the cut. The laceration was deep, but I hadn't hit any major vessels or tendons, despite the copious amounts of blood that now soaked my shirtsleeve.

Hill gave a short nod. "It's going to need stitches. Sit down here; I'll get the suture material." She gestured to a brushed aluminum autopsy table that someone was storing in the medical supply room for reasons unknown. I hoisted myself up, leaving a red smear on the smooth metal.

Hill came back with some gauze, antiseptic, lidocaine, and a suture kit, which she laid out on the table next to where I sat. As gently as she could, she flushed the wound with antiseptic, and I fought off flashbacks as the saline stung my raw skin. She's not Bodho, I reminded myself. Bodho is dead.

"You know, I heard about what happened," she said, filling a syringe with lidocaine. "And I understand what you're going through now."

I snorted. "You've barely logged any field time, much less been tortured," I snapped.

"Not in SHIELD," she informed me calmly, unshaken by my outburst. "I was in the US Army. I spent my twentieth birthday in some rat-infested prison in Kandahar. My present was a split lip." She spoke matter-of-factly, but didn't meet my eyes as she loaded the needle and made the first stitch. She'd used so much local that I didn't feel it at all. "After the extraction team got me out, I took an honorable discharge and tried to readjust to civilian life. But you can't just go back to the way things were. That feeling of being helpless, it stays with you, no matter how hard you try and forget."

"Did you ever …" I glanced down at my half-sutured wrist.

Maria shook her head. "I stopped eating."

"Anorexia?" I asked.

"Not really," she replied, as she continued stitching. "I didn't count calories or weight myself obsessively. It was all about the control for me." She looked away. "It was bad over there, May, really bad. And afterwards, I felt like my body wasn't mine anymore. So I took it back by controlling what I ate and when. But these things, they have a way of backfiring, and pretty soon it was controlling me. Eventually it was all I could do to swallow a spoonful of applesauce. The doctor at the VA used to give me this glucose solution through a shunt in my arm three times a week. He did everything short of putting a tube down my throat." She paused, and I saw her bite her lip. "It was awful. I felt horrible and disgusting and I just wanted to die."

"So what happened then?"

"Well, a few months after I got back, I met Molly Pendragon—don't know if you've heard of her; she's this battleaxe from Recruitment. Anyway, she stopped me on the sidewalk and told me she had a job offer. She said we could discuss it in the diner across the street. So we sat down at a booth, and she ordered me some soup and a milkshake, even though I must've told her half a dozen times I wasn't hungry. Told me to eat it, every last drop, and that when I was finished, we could start talking. I was terrified, absolutely terrified, but Molly's not exactly someone you want to disobey …" She tied off the last suture and reached for the gauze. "It took me an hour and a half, and it's the hardest thing I've ever done."

I was reminded of my long conversations with Hand in the prison cell, each of us confessing secrets we never would have told anyone else. Maria was trusting me with her past, and I felt strangely honored. Maria Hill, the tall, strong, ambitious Maria Hill, and the hardest thing she'd ever done was drink a milkshake and eat a bowl of soup.

"So I started at the Academy two weeks later," she continued. "Moll mentored me, got me into therapy, made sure I ate enough. And eventually I noticed that I could just pick up a bowl of macaroni from the cafeteria without thinking about it. It really freaked me out at first, but then I guess I just realized that starving myself wouldn't fix anything." She picked up a roll of gauze and began wrapping my wrist. "And you know what? Neither will this."

We looked at each other, a pregnant pause filling the room. I broke the silence.

"You're not going to put me in therapy, are you?" I asked.

"Nooooo. I value my neck way too much to try that."

The old Melinda would have laughed, but I just gave a slight smile and reached for some leftover gauze to take care of my raw knuckles.

"There are people at SHIELD psych I can recommend," she said, her voice carefully neutral. "No pressure, but the offer's on the table."

I didn't reply.

She changed the subject. "Want to go grab something from the cafeteria?"

"It's the middle of the night," I pointed out.

"There are usually leftovers."

"Okay." We got off the table and began walking towards the door, but I could feel the ache building up in my chest again, and I stopped and grabbed the doorframe, my breath catching in my throat.

Maria turned around. "You good?" she asked.

I nodded, frighteningly close to tears. But that couldn't be, because the new Melinda didn't cry.

"Come here, sweetheart," she whispered, and pulled me into her arms. I let her, thinking that it had been so, so long since anyone had done this for me. I buried my face in her shoulder and let the tears fall, my shoulders shaking, as every emotion I'd been keeping bottled up since long before Bahrain came to the surface. She held me, making soothing noises and stroking my hair. We stayed like that for a long time, until I ran out of tears and pulled away. I felt raw, exposed, and regretted letting her see me like this.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, ashamed.

"You've got nothing to be sorry for. You'll be okay; I promise."

"That's what everyone keeps saying."

"It's true. I'm all right, aren't I?"

It was much the same thing Phil had told me after the rescue, the same thing everyone had been telling me for the past two months, but it carried more weight coming from Maria. She had been through the same thing, and felt the same way afterwards. And now, here she was, one of SHIELD's rising stars and well on her way to becoming a level 9 agent. Maybe if she could recover, put herself back together with duct tape and safety pins, so could I.

"Really?" I asked.

"Yeah. It takes time, but you'll come through."

People had been telling me that since I got back. But for the first time, I believed it.


	11. Epilogue

The poison leaves bit by bit, not all at once. Be patient. You are healing.

— Yasmin Mogahed

* * *

Three days after my sutures came out, Agent Blake offered me a transfer to an administrative position at the Cupboard. Even though it was the last thing Melinda May would do, I accepted, because despite the years I'd spent in Operations, the countless missions I'd been on, I knew that this time, I couldn't go back out there. Everyone was shocked; how could the Cavalry leave the field for a desk job?

They didn't understand. None of them. Not even Phil. And how could they? They were whole; I was shattered.

The transition was surprisingly easy. I have an apartment in the city, where I eat, sleep, and store my belongings. It's bare of decoration or personal touches; half my things are still in cardboard boxes, sitting quietly in the corner. Realizing I could barely take care of myself, much less a cat, I left Parachute in the capable hands of my former neighbor's daughter. Though I do miss her company, she's much happier with a perky, 12-year-old owner who isn't either absent or depressed all the time. And I don't think she'd get along with the bright blue fish Phil gave me as a going-away present. I'm having a hard enough time not killing it as is.

I work in an air-conditioned office that smells like floor wax and cheap polyester. I've abandoned my tactical suits for slacks and a blouse, and sit at a desk every day stamping paperwork and entering data into spreadsheets. I like it. It's meditative. I work nine to five, and the risk of getting shot is minimal. I set up my cubicle exactly the way I like it, dividers nice and high, furniture and boxes of files neatly arranged to make a wall between me and the rest of the world. Here, no one knows me as the Cavalry. I'm just another office drone. Some days, as I'm washing my hands in the dingy old bathroom sink, I catch sight of a strange woman in the mirror. She doesn't look like the Cavalry. She doesn't even look like Agent May. She looks like a ghost in a charcoal-grey jacket.

The hardest thing Maria Hill ever did was eat a bowl of soup, and the hardest thing I've ever done is call the phone number she gave me and set up an appointment. The counselor assured me that nothing would go in my record, and that anything I said to her was strictly confidential. It was scary at first, telling a complete stranger what had happened to me, but to my surprise, I felt a lot better after getting it all off my chest.

In fact, I feel better all the time. Slowly, gradually, I'm regaining control, putting myself together piece by piece. The ghost in the mirror becomes more solid every day. I haven't cut since that day in the Hub. Maria was right; it doesn't solve anything. I keep my emotions firmly in check. If something doesn't serve me, I put it away in a little box until it does. There are small victories, like sleeping through the night, or going out someplace crowded. I don't smile when they happen, but maybe someday I will.

I find a source of solace in an unexpected place, the flight simulators. I've been a certified pilot for a number of years, but I'd never been terribly interested in it. Now, I find myself developing quite a taste for aviation. The concentration it requires drives away all the chaos and memories that plague my mind, and the smooth, solid rhythm of flying keeps me grounded. But most of all, I enjoy the solitude, being away from the small-minded idiots I work with, the crowded city streets, the din of a thousand voices shouting in the cafeteria. I'm becoming quite good, too. More often than not, my name dominates the high score board. I don't care. It's not about the glory, and besides, they're only simulators. I'm not actually flying anything.

It's a nice life, if a rather static one. Especially considering what I left behind. I left behind gunshot wounds and long stakeouts, hard choices and the nightmares that follow. When I wake up at night, heart pounding and skin slick with cold sweat, I remind myself I'm safe, and for the first time in years it's the truth. The scars are fading, scars from Congo and Bahrain, Zurich and Sarajevo, every mission-gone-wrong I've ever been on. Soon there will be nothing left to remind me of those awful, awful days.

So when Phil Coulson came by my cubicle and told me I was going back in the field, we both pretended my voice didn't crack.

* * *

**Author's Notes**

1_. Ichi, ni, san, shi_, and _go_ are numbers one through five in Japanese.

_2. Wahed, ethnayn, thalaatha, arba'ah_, and _khamsah_ are numbers one through five in Arabic.

3. Moose Tracks ice cream does in fact exist. I highly recommend it.

4. Chen 4 step is a basic tai chi form which, as the name implies, has only four steps.

5. SERE stands for survival, evasion, resistance, and escape, and is training given to members of the US military. It teaches them what to do if they find themselves captured or in enemy territory.

6. Most of Melinda's fighting techniques are accurate, especially the "snake" grab release she uses on the guard in chapter six. They are not, however, a substitute for taking a self-defense class from a qualified professional, something I strongly urge everyone to do, especially women and teenagers.

7. French is the main language spoken in the Congo, along with several indigenous dialects.

8. The chicken crossed the playground to get to the other slide.

9. The zygomatic arch is another name for the cheekbone. Melinda's was most likely fractured when Bodho punched her in chapter six. The orbit is another name for the eye socket. The rotator cuff, sometimes incorrectly called the rotary cuff, rotator cup, or rotary cup, is a set of muscles and tendons that stabilizes the shoulder joint.

10. Thank you for reading, and reviewing if you reviewed. It's been a pleasure writing for you guys. This is my first serial on , and I've really enjoyed the experience.

11. Please leave one last review, telling me what you thought of the entire piece. Tell me what you liked and why, but also tell me how I can improve. (Please don't just leave a one-liner that says you liked the story; those aren't helpful). Don't be afraid; writers thrive on constructive criticism. I want my next piece to be even better, and you can all help me. Additionally, let me know if you think this piece should be rated M. Update: I know it's been a while since this was published, but I can see from my stats that people still read it. Having read it all the way through, what are your impressions? Anything I did well? Anything I could've done better?

12. Keep an eye on my profile. I might write some more serials sometime. Next fanfic serial is probably either going to be for _Stargate: Atlantis_ or _Supernatural, _or possibly _The Hunger Games_, if any of those is your cup of tea. It might be a while, since I don't start posting until the whole thing's written, and I like to take the time to do it right. I'm also on FictionPress under the same username, and that profile's full of goodies for all to enjoy. There are some serials in the works there as well.

13. Once again, thank you to everyone. Big hugs all around.


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